EA, what do you have against Star Wars fans?

Comments

@Cliff_Forster said:
Like I said, someone at CNBC seems to think it was a driver to losses. I think it's foolish to think gamers have so little power as a congregation of consumers. The reditt community are your customers? I suppose if we want to say that doesn't matter to EA... we kind of knew that already.

Okay, so you’ve given ONE article saying there’s a connection. If it’s true, I’m sure there’s more articles from trusted financial institutions that will say the same thing. Bring us those articles and maybe then we could have our minds changed.

Forbes still a respected source for financial news?? Come on guys. Look, I'm pleased a couple guys here got to meet AMD folks and get to work inside the greater tech industry, happy for them. Just because someone you really like works for EA doesn't mean you have to stop worrying and learn to love the bomb. EA is a massive multi billion dollar company, and yes, they got egg on their face because they don't understand their customers, and the people that they have that do, clearly didn't make these horrendous decisions. The massive loss after the bad press isn't coincidental. And look, they have bounced back a bit, they are not where they were prior to the Battlefront release but they are not down 3 Billion in stock value anymore either, so yes stocks are volatile and hard to understand sometimes, but to be completely dismissive of gamers that want a better future for the hobby because you now have a friend or two that decided to work for guys that only see us as $$... That's silly. How many more articles should I find for someone to say, okay, dude might have a point. I mean if you like what EA did with Battlefront II out of the gate, cool, you can be fine with it. If you really think EA doesn't care about gamers on Reddit, okay... if you say so. But to dismiss a congregation of consumers as having less clout... well, it's how the machine wants you to feel. I mean, hey, these are guys in nice suits with Billions of dollars to play with, what could a little consumer making the league average possibly do to derail their plans??? I'm not buying that kind of corporate bravado. Reddit mattered, the price dipped hard, and someone at EA was pissing their pants for a few days and has overhauled their plans for a AAA big budget game as a result. Gamers matter, consumers matter, that's my point. To argue against that ideal because you want to impress someone that works for the corporation is silly.

I think a lot of these articles are spawned from reporters feeding into the reddit hype but whatever may have caused the dip investors must have gotten over it because EA's stock already recovered. Another thing we should keep in mind is it still made huge sales in November only being beat by COD despite coming out around the same time as ACO Madden and SMO. So even if the outrage caused it all it did was make their stock dip for a month and make their game the second most sold game in November (though I would argue that even if SWBF2 was perfect COD would've beaten it). I think the only effect we'll see from this is EA staying away from loot boxes for a little while.

Even with the lower sales still got second most sold and even that article doesn't think the effects of the outrage will be lasting. My main point was that there are a ton of factors that went into the lower sales and although the outrage may have been significant I don't think it was the only cause like all these articles say it was.

Ah video games news media, articles written by gamers who forgot what it is to be a gamer.

Estimates getting reduced isn't just something that happen(ed)s to EA, it happens all around the industry, just the games media likes to focus on negatives about EA because it's always cool to hate on EA. I wouldn't be surprised CoDWWII sales estimates were reduced after the game was released, in fact most games that came out this year probably sold under original estimates with few exceptions.

But you know, everyone listens to reddit and it's the end all be all of opinion making and pinpointing "problems" that aren't problems because echochamber of butt hurt.

My takeaway from playing with (and winning at) Apple stock over the course of four years: The stock price of behemoths is driven almost entirely by the story being sold in the WSJ, Forbes, et al. The cable shows are entertainment for folks buying 10 stocks at a time. The folks making the earth move are reading the old guard and that + earnings reports are their entire reality.

(PS: For me, winning at stock meant realizing the WSJ narrative was wrong, then buying and holding on until the narrative ended, as all good stories must.)

Guys, it is literally my job at EA to comb through the entire internet of comments around our games, do social analytics, and report to our executives on what the conversation is around our franchises and advise on how they should react. I'm willing to bet there are very few people in the United States more educated on this entire situation than myself, and certainly fewer have quantified the actual reaction and impact of this whole situation.

I'll get this out of the way - to say the last month and a half have been stressful for me is a gross understatement. They've been the hardest weeks of my working life, without question.

Despite all of this, I can promise you the pretense around Reddit driving the narrative and dictating the direction our executives and the impact on my company's NYSE value are completely and utterly incorrect. We're a Fortune 500 company. We are disciplined. Whether you like it or not, there are more moving pieces in the grand scheme of things than some comments on the interwebs.

Look. I'm not saying anyone needs to like or defend EA just because I work there. Hell, the majority of you haven't been EA customers for the last 5 years or so "just because", so there's no love lost when you openly talk smack about the company and act like I'm the victim. You weren't going to buy Battlefront 2 anyways, so what's your point?

It's been over a month since the game came out. The stock has normalized, the game is doing just fine (and if you'd actually play it, you'd find that it's legitimately quite fun), and if you're still angry about it, move on and play a game you do care about it. You do like playing video games, right? Or would you rather just be angry on the internet about the ones you don't play?

@NiGHTS said:
Wait, what? You just said WSJ drives the success of Apple and then your success with Apple was counter to WSJ's narrative

I said WSJ drives their stock price. I disbelieved that narrative when they drove it low, so I bought then. When the negative narrative ended, they stock gained traction again, and I sold. (Which oversimplifies the number of ups and downs I could directly correlate to WSJ narratives during the years in-between, but that was the overall point).

For some perspective you have to understand, I'm the son of a Union Steelworker that read all of Ralph Nader's stuff and even voted for him. I see the world in a way where often consumers are fighting the corporate machine. When the little guy scores even the smallest victory, to me it is kind of exciting, it shows that the collective still has some power, some say in how business is done, and I think that is incredibly important. So don't think of it as much as gamers vs. EA, think of it more as consumers standing up to the corporate machine. Look, if EA is successful in an exploitive business practice that undervalues their consumer, then what's to stop the entire industry from doing it? I found this especially annoying because I had some faith that EA figured it out with a couple of their prior releases trending to a better model, then we are back to releasing half the game, gouging to keep the multiplayer community together, and having an exploitive cash for competitive edge system. This is everything that is wrong with modern game releases, so if EA gets some egg on their face, has to scramble to make some adjustments because the consumer pressure did matter no matter how much you would like to pretend it didn't... Hey, that's good for everyone, even guys/gals that work at EA that do value their customers.

@Cliff_Forster said:
For some perspective you have to understand, I'm the son of a Union Steelworker that read all of Ralph Nader's stuff and even voted for him.

Ralph Nader? You mean the same Ralph Nader that wrote a book saying that “THE CHEVY CORVAIR WILL KILL YOU!” even though it’s been proven to the contrary?

"Unsafe at any Speed" is one of the most important books ever written. It's not simply about the Corvair, it's about the responsibility a company has to you to manufacture the safest product possible, and their responsibility to be transparent when they fail. Without that book, when your airbag blows open and spits hot molten shards into your jugular, your family wouldn't be able to sue to pay your burial costs.

Unstoppable: The Emerging Left-Right Alliance to Dismantle the Corporate State is fantastic by the way. It's about how more people should be aligned despite difference in ideology because 99% of Americans have a common enemy.

Anyway, off topic, becoming political, so lets all just drop it. I'm clearly the bad guy here so I'm exhausted explaining my point of view if I'm just going to continually get talked down to so........ Everyone just buy Battlefront II, pretend to be a Wookie or something. Merry Fn Christmas.

@Cliff_Forster said:
Anyway, off topic, becoming political, so lets all just drop it. I'm clearly the bad guy here so I'm exhausted explaining my point of view if I'm just going to continually get talked down to so........ Everyone just buy Battlefront II, pretend to be a Wookie or something. Merry Fn Christmas.

You don't get to be one of the most ready to argue a strongly held viewpoint people on the forums and be upset when people disagree with you. Talking down isn't the same thing and I don't think I've really seen that in this thread. You have said your piece, several times, and some people didn't buy and some people will. Moving on is probably the right thing to do, but whining isn't.

@Cliff_Forster said:
Anyway, off topic, becoming political, so lets all just drop it. I'm clearly the bad guy here so I'm exhausted explaining my point of view if I'm just going to continually get talked down to so........ Everyone just buy Battlefront II, pretend to be a Wookie or something. Merry Fn Christmas.

You don't get to be one of the most ready to argue a strongly held viewpoint people on the forums and be upset when people disagree with you. Talking down isn't the same thing and I don't think I've really seen that in this thread. You have said your piece, several times, and some people didn't buy and some people will. Moving on is probably the right thing to do, but whining isn't.

Look, I have a healthy sense of humor. I wasn't trying to appear butt hurt, at the same time, I think this issue has run it's course for Icrontic. I've given up, towel thrown in. There is no hope for effective discourse on gaming or fiscal related issues on this board without some people over internalizing it (possibly me included).... So we should all just let the Wookie win.

The real bummer is that Disney shut down LucasArts. They pumped out so many awesome games in the 90s & 00s.
To name a few:

The Jedi Knight Series

KTOR 1 & 2

Battlefront 1 & 2

It's a shame that Disney sold out to EA because all we've gotten from them in 4 years is 2 re-skinned Battlefields. SWTOR was okay, but at the end of the day I don't want to play a starwars FPS or MMO. I want to be a Jedi damnit. I wan't to swing a lightsaber and use the force. What I really miss is the multiplayer experience of Jedi Academy. I feel like its a huge missed opportunity especially given the popularity of arena melee games such as Chivalry and For Honor.

Maybe EA's hands are tied by Disney's control over the new cannon, but either way its a bummer.